Stealth Portraits Fuel Debate Over Privacy Laws

New legislation in Sweden designed to protect bystanders against acts of voyeurism mixes ambiguously broad language with commonsense edicts, prompting one photographer to test the laws’ limits with hidden-camera portraits.

Parts of the new law define spaces such as bedrooms and changing areas as “private,” but also ban photography that “irrespective of place, occurs in a way which is obtrusive, intrusive, or hidden and that is meant to be a serious violation of a person’s privacy as an individual.”

With cryptic portraits of unknowing passers-by captured through a one-way mirror, Moa Karlberg’s Watching You Watch Me treads the fine line of these legal distinctions. While Sweden has better laws than many countries when it comes to safeguarding the activity of well-intentioned street and journalistic photographers, Karlberg is worried that new laws may engender a culture of suspicion.

“It can be hard to define when you are in a private space,” says Karlberg. “The law can easily be overinterpreted and affect other types of photography.”

The Swedish government was pressed into action following a series of disturbing cases of peeping-tom intrusion, including a landlord filming a tenant changing and a teenager who distributed images of his naked girlfriend without his partner’s knowledge. The previous lack of actionable law meant the digital voyeurs went uncharged and unpunished. Authorities were left red-faced.

As Swedish English-language news site The Local reports, the law attempts to address photographers’ motives beyond its legal definition of “private space,” by referring to photos that are “meant to be a serious violation of a person’s privacy as an individual.” Proving or suspecting this intention seems particularly slippery.

There can be no argument with the protection of individuals’ modesty and right to privacy, especially in bedrooms and changing areas, but critics of the legislation argue it may inhibit the work of legitimate journalists in the field.

“It may seem trivial to worry about my rights as a street photographer, but I consider it important to discuss this issue before our rights get limited,” says Karlberg. “Until now, the laws have only restricted what you can publish. This new proposition puts the responsibility on the photographer…. This may lead to self-censorship among professional photographers.”

Karlberg set up her equipment in a storefront window behind a one-way mirror, blurring the line between street photography and an act now considered intrusive and criminally suspect.

“The store was dark, and the street was light, so I was able to capture people looking at their reflection,” says Karlberg. “As I took the pictures, it felt weird standing 2 meters from somebody staring right at me without knowing I was there. As if I actually stole something from their integrity.”

“I consider them an investigation of self-image,” she continues. “I have always wanted to know how people look when they see only themselves — a look that is almost impossible to get if you show the camera.”

Watching You Watch Me can be viewed on Karlberg’s website and was recently exhibited in Sweden. This gave her subjects the opportunity for feedback. One subject was a photographer and supportive of the project, but one female subject was uneasy, says Karlberg.

“She came to the opening and found it very uncomfortable seeing herself exhibited in a gallery and not knowing in what contexts her picture would be later published. I suggested I could cover her picture if she insisted.”